They sampled more than 100 athletes at three universities with a smartphone-based application used to collect health data in athlete's natural environments.

They found over 99 per cent of the health symptoms obtained would not have been captured through traditional injury surveillance that relies on electronic medical records or clinician reports.

"These initial results are striking and provide important insight as to how we may be able to better interface athletes with the sports medicine team in the college setting," said lead researcher Christine Baugh from Harvard University in the US.

"The ultimate goals would be to improve the health care received by college athletes and also to make injury and symptom surveillance more robust in these populations," said Baugh.

The data gathered during the study will be used to evaluate whether stress, sleep and head impacts sustained through sport influence athlete's symptom patterns.

"We hope to use this information to provide a more holistic and accurate picture of how sports participation affects collegiate athlete health and wellbeing," Baugh said. NKS MHN MHN

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